the same nightmares (in the same people)
by Bryn Elizabeth
Summary: Jyn and Cassian's daughter has a nightmare; they overreact in different ways. The war is over, but it demands to be remembered. This is how wars shape parents.


Little Lyra calls out in fear in the middle of the night, one sharp yell, and Jyn is awake and in her room in an instant, determined that her daughter will never, _never_ cry alone.

"Mama," Lyra says, reaching out her hands, and Jyn sits on the edge of the bed, grabbing for some piece of her as quickly as she can.

"Oh, my darling," she soothes, lifting the little girl into her arms. "Mama's here. I've got you."

Cassian appears in the doorway half a beat later, blaster in trembling hands and sheer panic in wide eyes and his heart in his throat.

Jyn puts a gentle hand up to calm him.

"It's okay, Cass. It was only a bad dream. Little girls just have bad dreams sometimes." She rocks Lyra back and forth, pressing her lips to her forehead. "What happened in your dream, sweetheart?"

"There was a big, big monster," Lyra says sleepily. "With big teeth."

"See," Jyn says, turning to face Cassian. "Just a monster with big teeth."

"It was a _scary_ monster," Lyra insists. "It had claws, too."

Cassian nods, letting out a shaky breath. He puts the blaster down on the dresser, moving to join his wife and daughter on the edge of the bed.

"Papa's here," he tells Lyra, pushing one of her dark curls out of her face.

Lyra's heavy eyelids start to slip closed, and Jyn lays her back down, pulling the covers up underneath her chin. She kisses the girl on the forehead, lingering for a moment.

"Mama is always here," she whispers. "Papa, too. We're never going anywhere. I promise."

Jyn slips her hand into Lyra's and she and Cassian stay there for a moment, watching, Cassian's hand warm on Jyn's back even as it continues to shake.

"Mama and Papa are here," Jyn whispers, an edge in her voice because she wants that truth to carve itself into her daughter's heart until there is no other truth. She thinks that maybe if she keeps repeating the words, they'll soothe her own aches of emptiness, her memories of being alone—if Mama and Papa are always with Lyra, then Lyra and Cassian are always with Jyn, and she never has to be alone again. She thinks that she would do anything for those words to stay true, no matter what or who else she has to sacrifice. No matter if she has to spend her life sitting right here on the edge of this bed—Lyra has never been good at sleeping, and Jyn knows this is because she never let her learn to get herself back to sleep, but the universe had another thing coming if it thought Jyn Erso would let her daughter cry alone for even a moment.

When Lyra wants her, Mama is there, and that's how the universe works.

* * *

"I was so _scared_ , Jyn," Cassian says, returning his blaster to the drawer of his bedside table. He runs a hand over his unshaven jaw, pausing as if to listen for more sounds of fear or threat from across the hall.

"I know." She sits on the bed, pulling him down with her.

"She screams, and I think, _someone is trying to hurt her, someone is trying to take her away from me_ , and I…" he bows his head. "I can't stand it, Jyn. I'm so scared all the time. And I don't know how not to be."

If Jyn has spent all of Lyra's life perched on the edge of a bed with her daughter in her arms, Cassian has spent that time in the doorway, watching to assure himself that they were safe, and keeping an ear out for anything or anyone that might jeopardize that. He can't sleep, sometimes, afraid that something will get them when he's left himself unaware. He's never had something so deeply _precious_ before, and it seems so fragile—everything in his life has always been fragile, just on the edge of being taken away, but if he loses this, loses _them_ , he can't possibly ever recover. He knows this, knows it more than he knows anything else.

Jyn nods. "Sometimes I can't put her down, because I don't want her to think that I would ever leave her." The words catch in her throat. "That _we_ would ever leave her," she corrects. "I don't want her to be alone like I was."

This is how wars shape parents.

"She won't be. We'll make sure of it," Cassian tells her authoritatively, his voice steady and sure.

He rubs his sweaty palms on his pants legs, thinking that he would die for Lyra and for Jyn, but he wouldn't let Jyn do the same.

"I don't want her to have any of the same nightmares we do," Jyn says quietly.

The war is over, but it demands to be remembered.

She is thinking of nights where one of them reaches for the other, sweaty and shaking and unable to say anything. Nights where the only way to make it through is to grab the other and press them against their chest, run their fingers through the other's hair and over their jaw and kiss their brow, whispering that it was all over, it was okay, they were together. Nights where the casualties of war were apparent, even if they were both laying there together in the dark, and they had made a tiny being of light and love who slept easily in the next room, uniting the best parts of the both of them.

The way they soothed Lyra was the way they learned from each other.

Cassian nods. "That's why _we_ have them, isn't it? That's why we did all of this. So that her only nightmares are about monsters with big teeth."

Not real monsters.

The war broke them and shaped them and it gave them each other and Lyra and some semblance of peace for her to grow up in—Lyra will not watch either of her parents die, she will not be a soldier at age six, she will not fear anything too real.

And they were never given a choice whether or not to fight in the war, but maybe there were reasons that they had to.

Jyn wraps her arms around Cassian's middle and he hugs back, pressing his lips into her hair. They hold each other so tightly that it's a little hard to breathe, but they don't dare let go. There are far worse reasons to be unable to breathe correctly.


End file.
